


Weird Little Greasepit - Sophomore Year - Summer

by appending_fic



Series: Weird Little Greasepit - Sophomore Year [11]
Category: Buddy Thunderstruck (Cartoon), Night In The Woods (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Deal with a Devil, Demon Summoning, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 20:51:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16227110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/appending_fic/pseuds/appending_fic
Summary: Angus Delaney wishes there was something that made his life worthwhile.Lucky for him there are people in the universe willing to make that happen.





	Weird Little Greasepit - Sophomore Year - Summer

Angus panted quietly in the dark of the pantry. He _hated_ summer. Without school to get him out of the house, with someone caring how often he was seen in the world outside, he ended up shut in the pantry more often than he liked. During winter, or even spring break, it was...fine, but during the summer it was...uncomfortable. If he could hold out until his mother got home without fainting, there was a chance he might get outside sometime that week.

But he was already feeling a little faint, and he didn't think it was that late, so he might end up passing out and that would probably get him stuck in here until next week.

It had been long enough for Angus' eyes to adapt to the darkness, to the tiniest sliver of light welling up from under the door. Sometimes he tried to catalogue the contents of the pantry, the mind-numbing activity distracting him from hunger. When he was younger, he'd spent his time trying to trigger some latent psychic power - opening the door, or reaching out to someone who would come save him - but that was before he realized magic wasn't real.

Today, he was contemplating the peanut butter jar. Well, his mother's. _She_ ate Illuminutty brand; he got store brand, because it was cheap and meant she didn't have to make him dinner when she didn't feel like it.

He got the joke, of course - the peanut turned on its side in the top segment of the pyramid was supposed to be an eye. But in the dark, feeling alone - feeling _lonely_ \- it looked like an eye.

It reminded him, vaguely, of the old rhyme kids talked about in elementary school. The Triangle Game. How did it go?

"Triangulum...entangulum." The dumb little rhyme at the start. And then something about metaphors? "Metaforis dominus...ventium. Metaforis...venetisarium."

Supposedly, if you did it right, you'd...well, he'd never been certain.

Was it supposed to have something to do with hell?

It felt _cooler_ , and Angus remembered how cheated he'd felt when he'd discovered the deepest circle of Hell was _frozen_ , making 'a cold day in Hell' a certainty. He wondered if this was heat stroke; he'd only had heat stroke once, back when his dad was still around, and didn't want to repeat the experience. The feverish chills sucked, but the worst part was having to check WebMD to figure out how to keep himself from getting so ill he had to go to the hospital.

But there was something else going on. It was dark, so Angus couldn't be sure, but everything around him looked...duller. Greyer.

With one exception. The yellow pyramid on the peanut butter jar - or the top triangle, the one with the peanut - was bright, vibrant yellow. Gleaming in the darkness. And the peanut looked different, filled out in the middle.

Angus realized what had happened only when the eye blinked.

And then two arms, thin sticks, like a bad drawing, reached out of the jar, bracing against the sides, and pushed, until the pyramid was floating, unsupported, between Angus and the jar. The thing had stick legs, too, and a bow tie - or, rather, the flat drawing of a bow tie - about halfway down. They snapped their fingers, and a top hat - a _drawing_ of a top hat - appeared in their hand. They flipped it, popping it on their head, and then turned, slightly, enough that Angus could see they weren't a pyramid so much as an actual triangle, two-dimensional, hanging in the air.

 _Fuck_. He was hallucinating, which probably meant he was going to the hospital, and his mom was going to be _pissed_.

The eye blinked again. "Hey, kid! Nice place you got here." The triangle made a slow circuit of the room, their two-dimensionality making Angus' eyes water every time he tried to really look at them. "Very Harry Potter."

"Who?"

"No one you'd know," the triangle replied. "I think I'm gonna call you 'Scar'."

"My name's Angus."

The triangle paused, swung around, and drew closer to Angus, just a little. He winced, drew back. He'd forgotten himself, for a second. The triangle held still for a long moment, before drawing back with a jaunty bounce that let Angus breathe easy again.

"No, I don't think I'll call you that. For one, I already know someone named Angus. For another, it doesn't capture your, you know, _essence_ as well as Scar. Don't take it personally - calling people ironic nicknames is my _thing_. Well. One of them. The cute thing. As opposed to the nightmarish ones. Ooh! Do you want to see one of the nightmarish ones?"

"Um. No. Thank you."

The triangle made a motion that was almost a shrug, and Angus wasn't certain how they'd managed that. "Your funeral. I mean. Or not. Not yet, at least. I mean, you're not _Caboose_. But hey! I'm being rude here! Not intentionally, either. You can call me Bill."

Angus wanted to ask if he could give _Bill_ an ironic nickname, but he knew that would be a mistake.

"It's good to meet you. Sir."

"Sir? Huh. I don't think anyone's ever called me _sir_."

"I'm sorr-"

"No, no. I like it. Makes me feel like a British schoolmaster." The top hat shifted to one of those weird college graduation hats. "One of those ones who runs a school full of secrets and lies. You know, bodies buried under floorboards. Young men collapsing under the strain of concealed passions and the stress of the Great War."

"What."

The triangle - Bill - huffed. "Forget it; you don't have the right context for this conversation. _Any_ way, let's talk business."

"Um. Business?"

"Yeah." When Angus didn't respond, Bill narrowed their eye, circling Angus slowly. "That's how this sort of thing usually goes. Teenager summons demon, trades something innocuous for the demon's assistance, hilarious sitcom-style shenanigans, like that season of Friends when Ross brought about the Apocalypse to keep Rachel from finishing her MBA."

"What."

Bill sighed. "Why'd you _summon me_? The 'cupboard under the stairs' thing you've got going on gives me a few ideas. I could replace your parents with parents who wouldn't lock you in the...pantry?"

Angus shook his head. "You're just a figment of my imagination."

" _Of course it is happening inside your head, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?_ " Bill retorted with a snicker. "Look, kid, I paid a lot of money - well, put a lot of effort into - getting the power to see out of anything that bears my image. And that means when you say the words - the _summoning_ \- in front of my image, I show up to negotiate. So… _what do you want_?"

Bill's suggestion he could replace Angus' mother with a better one was...appealing, but Angus wasn't about to waste his hallucination on asking for something that wasn't going to happen.

Remembering a chance encounter on the school bus, though, Angus had an idea. Something that wasn't _impossible_ , and something that'd make his life suck like, a little less.

"I want friends. Like, more than one. People who care about what happens to me." People who would _worry_ about him.

"...You might be the most boring summoner I've ever dealt with. _Friends_? Not that great, in the long run. _I_ had friends, once. Didn't help me much, and they're all dead. Most of them weren't even my _fault_."

Angus took a careful breath. "Does that mean-"

"Oh, I'll still _do it_. I am down for _anything_." The eye winked (blinked), but then Bill paused. "I did not mean for that to sound sexual. I don't do that. It's weird even when it's not like a twelve-year-old."

"So what...would that cost?"

"Just a minute of your time. Let me try to convince you you don't _need_ friends."

"You'll...get me friends if I convince you I really want them?"

"Sure! Give me one minute of your time, let me try to talk you out of wanting friends, and if you still want them, _bam_. You will get friends."

It didn't sound like much. But...well, who knew what demons got out of things like arguing with mortals about friendship.

Still, he knew better than letting there be any ambiguity in his agreement. "You've got sixty seconds."

Bill held out a hand. "If you're willing to deal...so am I."

Angus nodded, and then took Bill's hand. "Deal."

**Author's Note:**

> K O D B V Z K Y


End file.
